Determined to fight: Who is Mama Qadeer?

KARACHI:

Mama Qadeer’s son Jaleel Reiki went missing in 2010. While Mama Qadeer had a feeling about his son’s fate, he did not have the heart to tell his grandson. For three years he waited and then, two days before Eidul Azha, he took Reiki’s son to see his father’s bullet-riddled body.

In a booklet by Mohammad Hanif, The Baloch Who Is Not Missing and Others Who Are, Qadeer said that he also had a chat with the boy and told him who had killed his father and why. Reiki was the information secretary of the Baloch Republican Party. Qadeer says they [intelligence officials in plain clothes] came for him in two pick-up trucks with unregistered number plates. He added that his son’s friends had warned him that they were coming for him and one Friday afternoon, they did. During the years his son was missing, Qadeer rallied other families of missing persons and started the Voice of Baloch Missing People. They have held protests all over the country trying to raise awareness for their cause. Last year, Mama Qadeer led one of the biggest marches the country has seen - from Quetta to Islamabad where they walked 3,000 kilometres in 106 days.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 12^th, 2014.